More harassing calls received at DuBois

Calls may be linked to threats made last fall At least three W.E.B. DuBois College House residents received racially harassing phone calls, including two death threats, last Saturday, according to dormitory residents. University Police Commissioner John Kuprevich said last night that he is also aware of six additional harassing phone calls placed the day before both to individuals and various residence hall reception desks. According to recipients of the phone calls and police reports, there is also reason to believe that these phone calls are related to other harassing phone calls and bomb threats received by many residents of DuBois House and other dorms last October. Harassing phone calls and bomb threats forced the evacuation of DuBois House on the evening of October 10, 1993. DuBois resident Barry Carty said he received a racially harassing phone call last Saturday night at about 11 p.m. "It sounded like a tape recording," said Carty, a Wharton senior. "The person who was talking on the line said 'nigger' (pause) 'nigger' (pause), after that [the caller] said 'you're going to die, you'd better leave Penn.'" Carty added that he called the police immediately after receiving the phone call, but did not dial "257," Penntrex's call tracing function. He also said he believes his phone call was related to the October bomb threats. "I think it was the same type of call as the bomb threats," he said. "I get the feeling it's related to that." DuBois resident Yuriel Layne also received a harassing phone call Saturday night at about 11 p.m. and was able to trace the call by dialing "257." "The person said 'nigger,'" Layne said. "I actually believed it was a friend joking around and I said, 'yeah this is a nigger here.' [Then] the person said 'the niggers are going to die tonight.'" Layne, a Wharton freshman, said he remembered to dial "257" because of the incidents in October. "When this happened before, we were briefed on what to do," he said. He also said he was "confident" the two incidents are related. And Layne, like Carty, heard that two other DuBois House residents had received similar phone calls that same evening. Kuprevich said University Police are just beginning to bring the investigation together. And, he said, University Police successfully traced many of the phone calls to public pay phones in two different areas. "In all the locations where call trace was used, the locations were public pay telephones from two different locations," he said."One was in the area of North 52nd Street and the other location was on 33rd [Street], north of Market." He added that six of the phone calls may be connected "because of the wording used and/or the comments that were made." Kuprevich, though, declined to speculate as to whether this recent wave of harassing phone calls is connected to the previous calls made in October. "There's no way to know for sure," he said. "There are some similar comments, but there's no way to call that for certain at this point." Kuprevich said, however, that one of the harassing phone calls last year was traced back to a public pay telephone in the area of 33rd street, one of the two locations from which the recent phone calls were made. Layne said that while he feels fine, he is "upset this is happening again." And Carty said he has "a negative opinion" of the University. "I think this place is hostile for the black people who are here, from the professors to the students," he said. "There are problems here when it comes to race issues. I think there's a tendency for the people to hide behind these problems." University Police have put out notices to residence halls pertaining to the harassing phone calls and are currently investigating the incidents, Kuprevich said.